In this widely circulated image, anti-Semitic American writer Max Blumenthal is seen donning a yarmulke and "praying" to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Facebook

A recent Guardian article celebrating reports that Tony Blair was about to “step back from his role as a peace envoy for the Middle East” referred to notorious anti-Israel activist Max Blumenthal as an “Israeli affairs specialist” and – as if this was not preposterous enough – went on to claim that Blumenthal shared with Blair’s predecessor and former World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, the belief “that progress in peace talks comes first, and only when they have delivered some sort of stability will private investment follow.”

As anyone who has ever read anything by Max Blumenthal on Israel would know, he has absolutely no interest in any “progress in peace talks,” because he specializes in demonizing the Jewish State as too evil to be allowed to exist. While Blumenthal can’t quite make up his mind if it’s more effective to malign Israel as the Nazi Germany of our time or as the Jewish version of the savage terror group ISIS/Islamic State, he clearly believes that the world would be a much better place without a Jewish State, and that peace will only come once Israel’s Jews have been turned into a defenseless minority forced to choose between submitting to Arab rule and emigrating.

Given Blumenthal’s views on Israel, his output not only appeals to activists campaigning for the delegitimization and elimination of Israel as a Jewish State, but it is also popular on all the major sites frequented by conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, racists, and neo-Nazis: from Stormfront to David Duke’s site, Rense, and Veterans Today. Indeed, wherever there are Jew-haters, Max Blumenthal has fans who admire him as an “Israeli affairs specialist.”

A telling example of the kind of material that people who rely on Blumenthal as an “Israeli affairs specialist” get to read was provided when Blumenthal recently joined the effort to blame Israel (instead of heavy rain) for the flooding of Gaza. Like many other anti-Israel activists, Blumenthal posted a tweet with a link to an excerpt from a lengthy article authored by a Holocaust denier and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who was unwilling to accept the fact that there are no dams anywhere near Gaza that could be opened by Israel to flood the territory.

So if producing material appreciated by Jew-haters and promoting material produced by other Jew-haters is your idea of an “Israeli affairs specialist,” Max Blumenthal certainly fits the bill.